Streaming ate the theatrical window, but it never touched the gatekeeping. Why Cannes, Venice and Berlin still decide what cinema we'll be watching a year from now — including the films that end up on a platform.
Read the essay →The Tokyo International Film Festival hands a prize named for Japan's most national of auteurs to Mohammad Rasoulof — an Iranian director who can no longer set foot in the country whose cinema he has spent his life defining.
On 28 September Richard Linklater walked up to collect Zurich's Career Achievement Award — a summing-up prize for a filmmaker whose largest work is still years from existing.
Two weeks after San Sebastián handed its jury to a room of practitioners, that room gave Mike Leigh the Golden Shell — and the Best Screenplay prize for a script built in rehearsal, not on the page.
The festival that spent thirty years refusing to rank films now hands its year-old main competition to the biggest auteur name in Asian cinema — and the choice tells you exactly what Busan wants to become.
Founded to find the director nobody knows yet, Zurich opens its 22nd edition leaning on the faces everyone already does — and the trophy for both carries the same name.
For its 74th edition, San Sebastián adds an official SGAE prize for best original music in competition — the rare festival that will now put a film's composer up for judgement alongside its director.